


tell me again what the body is for

by renaissance



Series: fandom weekly ficlets [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Second Person, Possession, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Self-Destruction, Up to 4x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18105476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: The Monster discovers the line between pleasure and pain.





	tell me again what the body is for

**Author's Note:**

> okay before you read this please note!! ~~i haven't seen 4x08 yet! so i don't know if this is canon compliant or totally jossed or whatever! don't tell me!~~ all i'm saying is i think things could conceivably play out this way and i may or may not be a prophet - remains to be seen.
> 
> title from "the body" by pains of being pure at heart. inspired in part by [this meta](https://greywash.dreamwidth.org/74588.html). written a few days ago for [fandomweekly](https://fandomweekly.dreamwidth.org/)'s challenge "overindulgence" + bonus points for mention of a deity. so uh, basically the prompt for this fic was handed to me by the gods themselves? and it came third place in fw this week so that's :')
> 
> regarding the warnings: i've put a "chose not to use archive warnings" on this one, and a couple extra in the tags. basically nothing worse than what regularly happens on the show here but please exercise caution.

This is your body.

Your body could be any body. It’s not as though this is the most time you’ve ever spent in one particular body. Far from it. It’s just that you’re having more fun in this body. Long arms, thin fingers. Lots of people who care about this body, even if you are the one inside it, and who will play with you even if you know that it’s not yet you they see when they look at the body.

You intend to stay here, which is why you tell them that the human inside it is dead. You don’t know if that is strictly true. You don’t know a lot of things.

There are so many things you can do with a body like this. You use its height to tower over your adversaries; its eyes, so practised at coldness, to show them that this part is more than a game to you. Its thin fingers, splitting open the chest of a God and wrapped around the thing that’s kept inside.

You have taken parts from Bacchus, from Iris. There will be others. You will use them to build another body. Though you like this one, it has its limits. This is the first time you have been out of your cage—that you remember—and out here there are so many things that can hurt a human body, by design or otherwise. You have the kind of power that stops other bodies (or otherwise) from hurting this body. But. You are omnipotent, not omniscient. If there is some way the body will get hurt, something that might force you to find another body, you need to find out. And you don’t know how long it’ll take to build your new body. While you’re stuck here, you might as well make a game of it.

*

These are the things you find that will hurt the body.

There are pills you can put on your tongue. You can swallow them whole, two or five or ten at a time. They make the skin sweat, make the eyes see new shapes. There’s alcohol. It makes the limbs sluggish and delays the reflexes. There are things you can smoke that make the body feel like it’s floating. You can do all of these things at the same time.

You find something else, in the way the tongue is thrilled by the alcohol and the fast-beating heart loves the rush of the pills. You know it’s hurting the body. But it does not feel like it.

These things don’t affect the mind, because you’re in control there. If you weren’t, it would be another story; so long as you’re here, the body’s needs and your own are separate. It’s just that the body knows pleasure too and you have more fun when the body is having fun. And this body makes itself happy by damaging itself. You think that this must be a learnt response to a trick of the mind. Humans are like that: hurt as easily in abstract ways as physical.

That’s why it hurt Quentin so much when you told him his friend was dead.

*

These are the memories of the flesh.

You wrap the hands around Quentin’s throat and sense that these hands have been here before. There’s memory in the left one, of pulling this face close; in the neck, of leaning forward; in the lips, of meeting Quentin’s lips. You wonder if this was something else the human did to hurt the body. Or something to give it pleasure.

And you almost try it then, too; to re-enact the memory as a new game the two of you can play. But Quentin is angry, and these are not angry memories. You put the memories aside for another time. Quentin tells you he will stop playing with you if you hurt the body, so you tell him you will be the one to make the concession. It used to be fun, having these humans care about the body—your body—so much. Now it just feels like this game has too many rules.

The game is taking too long, anyway, and you’re getting bored. The humans are good at finding Gods for you to kill but it takes them a long time. You have already spent so long waiting. Now that things are happening faster than you’re used to, every delay feels like bleeding out slowly, only for the wound to be hastily patched over before you’re out sent to be cut open again. You would never do that to this body of your own accord. But what about that intermediate sort of harm, the kind that Quentin has forbidden?

You look at your hand. The hand at the end of the arm on the left side of the body. The human who owned this body used this hand to touch other bodies. Pleasure, or harm; harm, or pleasure?

*

This is your body.

When you kiss Quentin, you feel something new. This is your mind: this is Eliot, inside your mind, banging at the door for you to let him out.


End file.
